Mountains of Mourne, The

DESCRIPTION: The Irishman in London writes home to Mary to tell her of the city. He describes how the local women dress (or, rather, don't dress). He watches the King of England. He wishes he were home with Mary "where the Mountains of Mourse sweep down to the see"
AUTHOR: Words: Percy French (1854-1920)
EARLIEST DATE: 1896 (date of writing, according to Healy
KEYWORDS: love home separation homesickness clothes royalty
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1903 - Visit of King Edward VII to "Erin's Green Shore" (mentioned in the song)
FOUND IN: Ireland Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports, pp. 272-274, "The Mountains of Mourne (Mountains o' Mourne)" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, MTMOURNE*
ADDITIONAL: James N. Healy, editor, _The Songs of Percy French_, 1955-1962, revised edition 1986; I use the 1996 Ossian paperback, pp. 31-32, "The Mountains of Mourne" (1 text, 1 tune)
James N. Healy, _Percy French and His Songs_, The Mercier Press, 1966, pp. 65-66, "The Mountains of Mourne" (1 text, partial tune)
Roud #18229
RECORDINGS:
Gordon Bok, "The Mountains of Mourne" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #556, recorded 04/18/2023)
Peter Dawson, "The Mountains O' Mourne"(HMV [UK] B-3772, 1931; HMV [UK] B-9114, 1940)
Monica Rossiter, "The Mountains of Mourne" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Green Hills of Antrim" (tune, lyrics)
cf. "Canny Newcastle" (plot)
SAME TUNE:
The Green Hills of Antrim (File: HHH606)
The Stoker's Complaing (File: Tawn016)
Hospital Ship Song (File: Tawn073)
Old Gallipoli's a Wonderful Place (File: AWTBW100)
When a poor bloody pilot goes down in the sea (Reginald Nettel, _Seven Centuries of Popular Song_, Phoenix House, 1956, p. 232, mentions this as being in John Moore's _In the Season of the Year_, 1954)
NOTES [613 words]: Several sources say that the tune to this is properly known as "Carrighdhoun," but it is now much better known under French's title. The tune is reported by Gogan, p. 12, and by Healy to have been supplied by Houston Collisson, who performed with French for many years. According to Healy, p. 66, although Collison borrowed the tune, he doubled the time values (i.e. an eighth note became a quarter note, or a quarter note became a half note or two quarters), which extended the four-line tune over eight lines. It's still "Carrighdoun" if played without words, but when used with the words, it sounds rather different.
Healy reports that French sent the lyrics to Collisson on the back of a postcard.
The dating of the poem is more problematic. Gogan says that French is "reputed to have written it in 1896 on a very clear day when he could see the Mountains of Mourne from the Hill of Howth in North Dublin"; Healy gives the same date.
And yet there is the mention of England's King having "visited Erin's green shore." Now note that, in 1896, England *had* no King; the ruling queen was Victoria, and her husband Albert had died in the 1860s, when French was still a boy too young to notice girls, and Albert had never been King anyway. King George IV did visit Ireland (Smith, p. 191), and had received genuine popular acclaim (Smith, pp. 194-195), but he had died in 1830, long before French was born. The first English King to visit Ireland in modern times was Edward VII, who did not ascend until 1901 and who made his visit in 1903 (and "was regarded as a friend of Ireland and was the first of his line to be so," according to Curtis, p. 402, although I think many would have regarded George IV as a friend as well).
Edward VII did visit Ireland, but, to repeat, the year was 1903. So how could this song have been written in 1896?
Whatever the explanation, Edward's visit had little real effect; five of six histories I checked had no mention of the event (and some other reference I used apparently had the wrong date, since earlier versions of this Index gave the date as 1905).
But Edward's trip did show an interesting change in Irish attitudes: quite a few radical nationalists were very upset about the visit, but the ordinary people seem to have loved it; Kee, p. 154, calls it an "outstanding success," and cites newspaper accounts of how he was greeted. Compare the song's mention of the singer "cheer[ing] with the rest."
Too bad the Easter Rebellion, and the British over-reaction, did such a find job of messing that up.
For background on Percy French, see the notes to "Ballyjamesduff." This is said by Healy to be the most popular of all French's songs; Healy, p. 67 says that "There is a monument standing to-day, under the shadow of the Mourne Mountains, at Newcastle, Co[unty] Down to Percy French and his song. It is odd to reflect that when his publishers, Pigotts, first received the song, they turned it down as 'not serious enough for a ballad, not funny enough for a comic-song.' One of Pigotts readers persuaded them to take it, and it made plenty of money for them both, establishing French as a song-writer,and giving the entrèe to engagements in England."
I can't help but relate one other interesting anecdote, from C. S. Lewis's stepson. According to Gresham, p. 99, Fred Paxford, C. S. Lewis's long-time gardener, had a tendency to tunelessly sing odd songs as he went about his work. The text that Gresham cites is unquestionably this song, although much mangled. I can't help but wonder what Lewis would have done when Paxford mumbled (especially around a teenage boy) about women who "don't wear no tops to their dresses at all." - RBW
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File: DTmtmour

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